


Lay Down Your Burdens

by DizzyDrea



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Brainwashing, Character Death Fix, Coulson Lives, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DizzyDrea/pseuds/DizzyDrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He might never believe that he wasn't entirely to blame, but given time, he thought maybe he could let some of it go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Down Your Burdens

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wasn't going to do this. I wasn't going to write the post-movie wrap-up/fix-it. Not because I didn't want to, but because I've read so many, and so many others have captured the essence of what happened to Clint that I felt I couldn't add anything more. Muse, apparently, had some choice words to say to that (many of which I can't repeat here, but just imagine her ranting at me in Fury's voice and you'll probably get the idea). Also, _Coulson lives_ is now canon, so how could I resist?
> 
> Disclaimer: The Avengers and all its particulars are the property of Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studios, Joss Whedon, and a lot of other people who aren’t me. I am doing this for fun and for practice. Mostly for fun.

~o~

The battle was long over, and parts of Manhattan lay in smoldering ruin. The dead numbered in the hundreds; the injured in the thousands.

But there were more casualties from this battle than anyone could count.

Clint Barton sat in an interview room at SHIELD Headquarters. After the battle, after shawarma, the Avengers had gone back to HQ because the helicarrier was a wreck in need of a major overhaul.

That was his fault.

When they'd arrived, everyone had been sent to medical to be checked out. Once he'd finished arguing with the nurses—he was fine, there were others more in need of attention than him—he'd been escorted to an interview room.

He thought it should probably have been a holding cell, but he figured they'd sort that out soon enough. He just wanted to pass out somewhere, stop thinking about everything and just sleep for a month. But he'd been a SHIELD operative long enough to know there'd be questions. People would want to know what had happened, and he'd have to tell the story more times than he wanted to think about. And the one person he most wanted to see was the one person he wouldn't ever see again.

That was his fault, too.

He sat with his arms folded on the table, head pillowed on his arms. It hurt to think right now, hurt to breathe, to simply be. But he had to face what was coming, no matter if what he really wanted to do was to run and keep on running. He'd done that before, and wound up here, with SHIELD. He had no doubt that they'd run him to ground again, if they really wanted to. So he sat and waited.

He had no idea how much time had passed when the door to the interview room slammed open. Nick Fury charged in, his coat billowing behind him, every inch the Director of SHIELD.

"Barton," he barked, spinning on his heel with barely a glance back, "with me. Now."

Clint blinked, his head popping up at the sharply-worded command. He couldn't figure out why the Director himself would be coming to escort him to a holding cell; maybe it had something to do with the fact that Phil Coulson was his friend.

He must have sat there longer than he'd realized, because the Director returned, filling up the doorway with his broad shoulders.

"Was I unclear before?" he asked, though it wasn't really a question. "You. With me. Now."

Clint jumped up, his chair clattering uselessly to the floor in his hurry to follow. Once again, Fury turned, not waiting to see if Clint was behind him, and strode down the hall. Clint followed, a little more slowly, not eager to reach the detention cells even if that was where he thought he belonged.

But instead of heading for the sub-basement, Fury stopped just a few yards down the hall. When Clint drew level with him, he turned the knob on the door and strode inside as if he owned the place.

Technically, Clint supposed, he did.

Clint followed him in, realizing that they were in the observation room for another interview room. He opened his mouth to ask why, but Fury beat him to it.

"Watch."

Clint turned to the window, spotting Thor, leaning against the wall to their right. He looked… troubled. Sad. Clint's eyes tracked to the left, and spotted the other man in the room, slumped in a chair. Doctor Eric Selvig, looked about as bad as Clint felt. 

He'd heard bits and pieces about the parts of the battle he wasn't directly involved with; Natasha had filled him in a bit as they sat and ate shawarma. He knew that Selvig had hit his head, same as Clint, which was what had released Loki's control over him. Privately, Clint thought maybe Selvig had been lucky; Loki hadn't needed him to do anything besides build the device. If anything good had come out of this, it was that Selvig didn't have any blood on his hands. He wouldn't have to live with the knowledge that he'd killed people, however that had been accomplished.

He saw Fury flip a switch out of the corner of his eye, and voices filled the room.

"Tell me, brother," Thor was saying. "Tell me of your time with Loki."

Selvig cringed, and Clint could sympathize. He wasn't looking forward to this conversation at all.

"It was like," the man began, his soft accent reaching Clint's ears through the speaker, "like I was under water. Everything was… muffled, indistinct. Except when Loki would command me to do something. Then it was crystal clear."

Clint could remember that. Feeling like he was in a fog, like nothing was real. But when Loki would order him to do something, everything would crystallize. 

"There was nothing I could do," Selvig went on. "Every time I reached for… myself, I would feel a burst of pain, as though Loki were pressing that damned scepter into my brain. I couldn't stop myself."

Selvig bent over, cradling his head in his hands, as though the pain were still there. Clint knew what that felt like. He'd tried to fight it, tried with everything in him, but he just wasn't strong enough. And if he hadn't been strong enough, what chance had Selvig had?

"It was not your fault," Thor said, moving to crouch in front of the scientist. "You did not intend for any of this to happen. Loki alone bears the guilt and shame."

"But I should have tried harder," Selvig said. "I should have _fought_. I should have been able to do _something_."

"Natasha told me that you built a failsafe into the device," Thor said. Clint was surprised the man even knew what that was.

"I'm a scientist," Selvig said, his head popping up to look Thor in the eyes. "What kind of scientist would I be if I didn't make sure there was no chance that the experiment could harm others?"

"Did Loki command you to do that?" Thor asked softly.

Selvig stared at the floor quietly for one long moment as the truth dawned on him. "No," he whispered. "No, he didn't."

"Then you did well, my friend," Thor said, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. "You protected others when it was in your power to do so."

"But it wasn't enough," Selvig said. "They still came through. How many people died because I didn't fight hard enough?"

"Listen to me," Thor said, shaking the man until he raised his eyes to meet Thor's. "What happened was none of your fault. Your mind was not your own. You did what you could, given the circumstances, and no one could have done better. I would be proud to stand by you and call you friend, even still."

Selvig took a deep breath. Clint could see that he wanted to believe Thor's words, but the guilt was hanging on. He could understand how that felt.

Fury flipped the switch, and whatever Thor would have said next was cut off. He turned to Clint, crossing his arms as he leaned against the wall on one shoulder.

"Now, I know you're a smart guy," he said, spearing Clint with his one-eyed glare, "so I better not hear any of that guilty shit out of you."

Clint shrugged, turning to watch Thor console his friend. "Doesn't matter what you think. I'm still to blame."

"Bullshit."

Clint turned, startled by the Director's bluntness, though he probably shouldn't have been.

"Listen to me," Fury said, an unconscious mimic of Thor's words just moments ago. "What happened to you—what you did while you were under Loki's influence—none of that is your fault." Clint opened his mouth to refute the words, but Fury held up a hand to forestall him. "Brainwashing's no joke, Barton. Better men than you have tried and failed to break free."

"You were assaulted," the Director said. Clint cringed at the word.

"I don't—"

"You. Were. Assaulted. Violated. Mindfucked. Brainwashed. Whatever you want to call it, that's what Loki did to you." Fury stared him down, daring him to deny his words. "You were taken against your will, your mind was taken and everything you knew forcibly extracted. You were made to do things you didn't want to do, things you wouldn't have done, had you been able to control your actions. Every one of the Avengers understands that except you."

"I gave him intel!" Clint shouted, unable to control himself any longer. "I told him about the helicarrier's weakenesses. I led the fucking assault. People died because I couldn't stop myself from giving up every shred of knowledge I had."

"Who did you get to go on the raids with you?"

It was such a non-sequitur that for a moment, Clint was speechless. "I—they were just mercenaries. Guys I knew that could do the job, for the right price."

"There are plenty of people out there who hate SHIELD and all it stands for," Fury said, calm and quiet. "Why not those guys? Why not some organization that could plan and execute a coordinated attack that would have completely crippled SHIELD and taken away our ability to fight?"

"Because—" Clint paused. Why hadn't he gone after one of the organizations that had it in for SHIELD? There were plenty of them out there, and the attacks would have gone even smoother if he had. So, why hadn't he? "I—guess I wanted to keep it a tight group. Only as many men as I needed, and everyone focused on Loki's goal, not revenge against SHIELD. And these guys wouldn't be able to use the information they gained about SHIELD operations and security. Probably. I think I was expecting them all to be killed, to tell you the truth."

Fury looked pleased, as much as he could anyway. Clint went over his statements again, wondering why. Then, it hit him. "I was protecting SHIELD. I was making sure that, at the end of all of this, SHIELD would still be secure."

"And that's why none of this is your fault," Fury said. "You fought. You did whatever you could, despite mind control so deep and thorough that you probably didn't even remember your name."

"Yeah, but people still died." And oh how Clint wished that wasn't true. But it wasn't people dying that bothered him. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and whispered, "Phil died."

Fury pursed his lips, giving him the hairy eyeball. He knew the Director wanted him to just chalk it all up to mind control and let it go, but he couldn't. If for no other reason than because his handler had died in the attack on the helicarrier, and whether or not he pulled the trigger, that death was on him.

"Come on," Fury said quietly. "I've got one more thing I want to show you."

Clint followed the Director out of the room and down hallway after hallway, down stairs and around corners, until he knew with cold certainty where they were going.

"I don't think—"

"Shut it, Barton." 

They moved past the door to the morgue, and Clint began wondering just what Fury wanted him to see. The wounded? He'd seen plenty of that on the streets, didn't need to see SHIELD personnel laid up in hospital beds to know there'd been consequences for his actions, under the influence or not.

Fury pushed through the doors to the medical wing, nurses and medical technicians parting like the Red Sea as he charged in. Clint followed in his wake, steadfastly ignoring the stares he was getting.

They finally stopped in front of a door with a window. He could see inside, just a little, and recognized it as one like the room he was in when he came back to himself. There was someone in there; he could hear the faint beep of the machines through the door, and he could see the outline of a body under the sheet. Fury opened the door and stepped aside.

Clint stepped into the doorway, then turned around when it became clear that he wasn't being followed. "You're not coming?"

Fury shook his head. "When you're finished, go get some rest. We'll start the debrief when you're feeling up to it."

And with that, he was gone.

Clint turned back to the room. He had no idea who was in the bed, no idea what Fury expected him to accomplish, but that didn't stop his feet from carrying him further into the room. His eyes trailed over the sheet covering the body— _person_ , _alive_ , he reminded himself. He saw the leads, connecting this poor soul to the machines, the IV in the back of the hand. His gaze lingered on the chest, on the steady rise and fall of it under the sheet, not the only proof that this person was still alive, but reassuring in its way.

He recognized that he was avoiding looking at the face. He didn't want to know who it was, not really. Knowing might force him to feel guilty all over again, to add another victim to his ledger. But of their own volition, his eyes drifted to take in the face.

Clint stumbled back, his back hitting the wall on the other side of the room.

There, in the bed, breathing, alive, despite everything that had happened, was Phil Coulson.

He stood frozen for long minutes, just watching Phil's chest rise and fall as he breathed on his own. There was an IV bag draining liquid into his body, and the steady beep of the heart monitor marking out the cadence of his heartbeat. All evidence that he was still—somehow, _miraculously_ —alive.

Clint rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, but the scene didn't change. Phil was still laying there in the bed. He hadn't died; Clint hadn't killed him. Though by the look of things, it had been close.

That was his fault, too.

He had no idea how long he stood there, just watching Phil breath. It must have been a while, because when the nurse came in to check on Phil, he nearly jumped out of his skin. He'd forgotten where he was, simply tuned out the rest of the world, and focused his entire being on Phil and the steady beep telling him that his friend was alive.

"I'm sorry," the nurse said, offering a small smile. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"S'okay," Clint said, lifting his shoulder in a small shrug.

"You must be very glad to see your friend alive," she said.

He watched her check Phil's IV and record his vitals on the chart at the foot of his bed. "You have no idea," he muttered.

She didn't say anything to that, simply smiled and winked at him. "He was lucky. He coded twice in the operating room before we were able to stabilize him. The scepter missed his heart by a couple of millimeters; he's got a few cracked ribs and a punctured lung, but he'll be right as rain in no time."

It made his stomach turn, that she didn't know what his part in Phil's injuries had been, that she was treating him like any other family member or friend. He opened his mouth to say something—what he wasn't sure of—when she turned kind eyes to him.

"Talk to him," she said. She reached out and laid a hand on Clint's arm; he flinched, but otherwise didn't move. "Let him hear the sound of your voice. It'll help, I promise."

Her words sounded heavy, like there was more meaning behind them than just what she'd said. She dragged a chair from the corner of the room and placed it beside the bed. He shuffled forward, dropping inelegantly onto the seat. She patted his shoulder, offering another kind smile, then quietly left the room.

Clint stared at Phil for the space of a few heartbeats, not sure what he should say or even that Phil could hear him. He reached out, almost without thought, and took Phil's hand; the fingers were warm to the touch, just another affirmation that Phil was, in fact, still alive. He settled Phil's hand into his own and bent forward, pressing his forehead to the back of the man's hand.

"I am so, so sorry," he said, his voice catching on the tears he was trying not to shed. "I didn't mean for you to get hurt. I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt. I tried to fight it, but I couldn't. And now you're here, and it's my fault. It's my fault."

He just kept chanting that, as if somehow saying it would make it go away. 

Suddenly, the hand beneath his twitched. His head popped up, but Phil still looked like he was sleeping peacefully. He closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair as he gusted out a sigh.

"Stop it."

The voice was faint, weak, and Clint almost thought he'd imagined it, but when he opened his eyes, he found a pair of blue eyes staring at him. They were clouded with pain, and open barely a slit, but Clint thought he'd never seen anything so marvelous in all his life. He jumped up out of his seat and leaned over the bed, bracing his arm on the pillow over Phil's head.

"You gave us quite a scare, sir," he said. He cocked his head when Phil opened his mouth to speak. "And if you quote Mark Twain, I'll finish the job."

Phil chuckled breathlessly, his face crumpling when the pain rolled through.

"Hey, hey, none of that," Clint said. He squeezed Phil's hand, still gripped firmly in his own, and was gratified when Phil squeezed back. It was weak, but it was there.

"God, that hurts," Phil gasped moments later, when his breathing and heart rate had once again settled.

"Getting stabbed will do that for you." Clint paused, his eyes flicking away before coming back to meet Phil's. But when he opened his mouth, Phil squeezed his hand again, giving a minute shake of his head.

"Don't," he said quietly. "Not your fault."

Clint squeezed his eyes shut. "Yes, it was. I led the raid. Loki would never have gotten on board the carrier if I hadn't given him the means."

"Not. Your. Fault," Phil said, slowly, carefully. He tugged on Clint's hand, and Clint had no choice but to open his eyes and meet Phil's steady gaze. "Ask Fury. Not your fault."

"He's already said, but—" Clint broke off. He wanted to believe that it hadn't been his fault, that he could absolve himself of his actions under Loki's control, but it wasn't that easy. He was still raw, still hurting over what had happened, though finding out Phil was alive was helping.

"'M gonna keep repeating," Phil rasped, "'til you believe."

"That could take a while, sir."

"'M not going anywhere."

Clint let those words sink in to his very soul. Phil was alive; he wasn't going anywhere. He'd said as much, and Clint knew from experience that Phil never lied to him. 

He looked down at his handler's face, seeing the strain and exhaustion etched there. He straightened up, smiling kindly. "Get some rest. I'll still be here when you wake up."

Phil must have taken that as assurance that Clint would at least think about what he'd said, because he let his eyes drift closed and dropped away into sleep. Clint let go a heavy sigh and sank back down into his chair.

He ran his thumb over Phil's knuckles as he watched the other man sleep. He knew he had a long road ahead of him—they all did—but for the first time, he began to hope that he'd be able to crawl out from under the crushing guilt and shame of what he'd done. He might never believe that he wasn't entirely to blame, but given time, he thought maybe he could let some of it go.

After all, if his friends—his team—didn't blame him for what happened, perhaps he could forgive himself, too.

The quiet of the room, and the steady beat of the heart monitor lulled him into a dreamless sleep, and so he never saw the broad-shouldered shadow fall over him, nor who it was who covered him with a blanket.

He would understand later, though, that _that_ was the day that the Avengers were truly born.

~Finis


End file.
